


Solitude

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They eat the cold supper together at the window.  Watch the sun go down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitude

**Author's Note:**

> Post Episode 408. Written for LJ's hc_bingo community for the prompt "moving"
> 
> * * *

On the third day, they stop at a ramshackle building hidden beneath a copse of trees in an overgrown field. It's little more than a shack, really, but the rear wall backs onto a steep ravine and the sightline from the single window is good. Nothing – walker or human – will be able to sneak up on them. 

Beth sets her gun carefully on the table before digging through her bag. They haven't been able to forage much, but there are still a few handfuls of berries and a dented tin of green beans. She finds a couple of chipped plates in the lone cupboard, wipes the dust away with her dirty sleeve before divvying up the last of their provisions.

They eat the cold supper together at the window. Watch the sun go down. 

"We'll find them," Daryl says, after they've been sitting silently for ten minutes, or thirty, or fifty. When there is nothing left of the berries but a pile of dry pits on a cracked plate. 

Beth hasn't cried, not since she watched the sword slice into her father's neck. Not for Maggie or Glenn, or for the children, or for a sweet little innocent baby. She can't cry, because then she might not stop, and she's already been down that road. Her job now is to survive, to be a good helper to Daryl, to make a new place in the world.

"We will," Daryl says. 

When his hand creeps across the table to touch hers, Beth looks up. She manages a small smile. 

"I know," she lies. Because Daryl lost a brother as much as she lost a sister. Because he needs to believe. 

Daryl nods, pats her hand before leaning back to pick up his crossbow. He juts his chin toward the door. "Gonna do a circuit 'fore we turn in," he says.

Beth nods too, watches until he crosses the field and disappears from sight. 

Somewhere out there, Rick and Maggie and Glenn are trying to find them. Sasha and Tyrese, all of them. And Daryl can track, she knows that – they spend half their days going down side-trails and pushing through brambles looking for sign, and she's already learned to stand quietly to the side, keeping an eye out for walkers while he hunkers down and looks at strands of grass or clumps of dirt for signs of passage that she can't see. 

Daryl needs to believe. But Beth remembers that it was only happenstance that led them to Andrea again, and to Daryl's own blood brother, and when she thinks of them she now only sees that sword coming down, fast and sure, and the blood spurting in thick inky jets from her father's neck.

Beth sees movement in the shadows at the tree line, blinks away the memory and squints out the window until she's sure that the figure forming out of the dusk is Daryl. Then she pushes her hair out of her eyes and gets up from the table, scrapes away the berry pits into the sink and does her best to wash off the plates before shoving them into her nearly empty bag. She starts searching the cupboard for anything else they can use, tucks the package of fireplace matches she finds next to the plates. By the time she's finished searching Daryl has returned, and she's propped their bags next to the door for easy access.

They'll be moving out again at first light.


End file.
